NAACP, Shutters Fail to Resolve Incident at Hotel

To hear a posh Santa Monica hotel tell it, the situation was a misunderstanding in the midst of a nasty election battle.

To hear some African Methodist Episcopal clergymen tell it, it was discrimination, possibly racially motivated.

That is how the two sides are framing a September incident that has prompted the Santa Monica-Venice chapter of the NAACP to contemplate a protest of Shutters on the Beach.

In early September, four ministers from the Los Angeles AME Church led a prayer vigil for several dozen supporters of the “living-wage” initiative on the Nov. 5 ballot in Santa Monica.

After the event ended, the suit-clad clergymen -- Los Angeles AME Bishop H.H. Brookins; the Rev. Ronald Williams, pastor of First AME by the Sea in Santa Monica; Presiding Elder Lonnie Wormley; and the Rev. Greg Ward -- walked to nearby Shutters to have lunch.

As Williams tells it, when they arrived at the hotel driveway, a parking lot attendant put his hand up and told them they could not enter. When Williams asked why, the attendant told them to wait while he got a security guard.

According to Williams, the guard, an African American named Guy Groves, also told the foursome that they could not enter, saying: “Windows might get broken.”

Williams pointed to Brookins, who is 69, and said, “I am taking him to lunch.” Williams said that Groves repeated: “Windows might get broken, and it has happened before.”

Richard Lichtenstein, a spokesman for Edward Thomas Cos., which owns the hotel, said Groves was being cautious because protesters attending previous living-wage rallies had entered the hotel with megaphones and disrupted business.

On the day of the incident, Groves, the hotel’s director of security, asked the men to wait while he went inside.

“I didn’t realize how angry this was making me,” Williams said.

“I was really embarrassed and insulted that this would be happening to me with my superior standing here.”

Groves later told the men they could enter, but they declined.

Soon after, Williams heard from Darrell Goode, president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People’s Santa Monica-Venice branch and a member of Williams’ church.

Goode requested a meeting with Shutters’ management. Edward Thomas Cos. contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the successful effort by hotels and restaurants to defeat the living-wage initiative.

Goode, Brookins, Williams and Timothy S. Dubois, president of Edward Thomas, met in Beverly Hills. Lichtenstein was also there.

At the meeting, Dubois apologized and noted that the parking lot attendant had called the security guard, who called the hotel’s manager, who called Dubois.

Dubois and Williams agreed that the situation should be resolved. Among the suggestions were that Shutters contribute to Williams’ church and hold sensitivity training for its workers.

In late October, Goode wrote to Lichtenstein, proposing that Shutters serve as title sponsor for an NAACP fund-raising dinner, at a cost of $50,000 to $80,000.

Soon after, Santa Monica voters narrowly defeated the living-wage proposal, which would have boosted the pay of low-income service workers in the city’s coastal tourism zone.

Lichtenstein then called Goode and said the hotel was a small business that could not afford to sponsor the dinner. He offered to provide 10 hotel rooms and take a table at the dinner.

Goode called that unacceptable.

“We look at the clergy as the pinnacle of the culture,” Goode said in an interview. “When you insult that, you insult the whole community.”

Brookins, for one, called the incident a “terrible shock -- worse than what I saw in the civil rights days back in the 1960s.”

For six weeks, Goode said, community members have met about the issue.

On Saturday, it was referred to the legal redress committee of the Santa Monica-Venice chapter of the NAACP. On Thursday, he said, the panel will submit it to the regional NAACP office in Los Angeles.

For its part, Shutters said the matter was never racial. “There is no pattern [of racism] at the hotel,” Lichtenstein said.

Some weeks ago, Lichtenstein said, the hotel spent $5,000 on sensitivity training.

“I wish I knew why they have chosen to do what they’re doing,” he added, referring to the NAACP. “They’re stirring the pot for a reason that is unclear to me.”